November 12, 2014
Award winning playwrights watch students bring their work to life
Bachelor of Performance students are this week premiering three original plays written by three award-winning Australian female playwrights for their end of year assessment at University of Wollongong (UOW).
Written specifically for UOW second year performance students, the three plays, What goes down in Vegas by Patricia Cornelius, Au pair by Melissa Reeves, and Welcome to Bulgaria by Angela Betzien, draw on a subject that looms large in the lives of young people – the gap year.
“The gap year is a time when the family is left behind and there’s the whole world to explore and become part of. We’re young and desperate for adventure. Some of us return as different people, some of us don’t come back at all. Some of us return and pick up where we left off, as if nothing had intervened,” Catherine McKinnon, the plays’ director, said.
Madeleine Stedman, 19, from Leichardt, is one of the 19 fledging actors to have met with the three award winning playwrights to prepare for this year’s performances, known collectively as The Gap.
“Walking into our first workshop for The Gap project back in June was in equal parts a daunting and thrilling experience … We were all pretty starstruck, but what made it exciting was the prospect of telling new Australian stories and discussing as equals our ideas surrounding the draft scripts we'd been entrusted with,” Madeleine said.
“This project was a live, organic being that we helped to create, as such we felt we could truly own our characters, breathe life into them, lie awake at night thinking about them, and we did.
“Since our first workshop, the three months of rehearsals have been filled, quite literally, with blood, sweat and tears. But on our opening night, seeing the playwrights again, their faces beaming along with our director Cath's confirmed that it was all worth it.”
Patricia Cornelius is an award-winning playwright and a founding member of Melbourne Workers Theatre. Her play, Savages, which is inspired by the Dianne Brimble case, is currently shortlisted for the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for Drama.
Melissa Reeves is an award winning Melbourne playwright with 25 years experience. She is best known for The Spook, Furious Mattress and Who’s Afraid of the Working Class.
Angela Betzien is a multi award winning writer and a founding member of independent theatre company Real TV. Among many awards, she has received the 2011 Sydney Theatre Award for Best New Australian work, the 2012 Queensland Literary Award for Drama, the 2012 Kit Denton Disfellowship and the 2008 Richard Wherrett Award for Excellence in Playwriting.
THE GAP
When: Tuesday 11 November to Saturday 15 November, from 7.30pm
Where: Performance Space, 25.168, UOW
More information: http://lha.uow.edu.au/taem/performances/UOW183100.html Tickets: http://goo.gl/7CVdK6
Media contact: Jacqueline Wales, Media & PR Officer, +61 2 4221 4582, +61 427 225 657, jwales@uow.edu.au
- Additional photos can be found online